Yesterday we were supposed to have searched everywhere, even here. Slaves with scythes had hacked at the creepers. I had trodden down parts of the undergrowth myself. I had told some of the helpers to crawl into the thickets.
Not good enough, Falco. There was a place where an angle of the boundary wall turned away. Bushes shielded it from obvious view nowadays, but it had once had a purpose. In fairness to me, I had seen someone else exploring this area yesterday. But it is never safe to rely on other people. In a real emergency, you must double-check every inch of ground yourself. Never mind if your helpers grow fractious because it looks as if you do not trust them. Never mind if you exhaust yourself. Nobody else is truly trustworthy. Not even when, like you, they know a child’s life is at stake.
Nux was going crazy now. She had reached a small clearing, where stonework had defied the encroaching undergrowth. This might be where Nux had found the mop. Gaia had definitely been playing here. Somehow, she had even managed to make herself a fire. Perhaps she spent hours rubbing sticks together to do it; more likely she took some embers from the burning garden rubbish nearer the house. The ashes of her mock Vestal fire, cold now, of course, formed a neat circle. They were quite clearly different from the great mounds of garden clippings, and if anyone had shown me these yesterday, I would have tracked down the child there and then.
I spotted a kitchen pitcher, lying on its side.
Nux ran to the pitcher, sniffed at it, then ran past and lay down with her nose between her paws, whining frantically.
“Well done, Nuxie; I’m coming.”
I could see what had happened. Little hands had pulled back a curtain of weeds to discover an old flight of four or five shallow stone steps. Ferns grew in crevices and green slime lurked on the lower slabs. Anyone familiar with springs would realize that this had once been a source of water, though it must have been an inconvenient distance from the house. Even a six-year-old girl, if she was bright and capable, would work out what she had found; then, forbidden to trouble the kitchen staff, she might try to see if she could fill her pitcher here. The steps led to the head of a well shaft. When it went out of use, it must have been boarded over. Over the years, the boards had rotted. So when Gaia tried to move them or walk on them, some gave way and fell into the shaft. Gaia must have gone down with them.
I knelt at the edge. I leaned over too far, and a sharp rattle of stones frightened me; the edge was crumbling perilously. All I could see was darkness. I called out. Silence. She had drowned or been killed by the fall. Nux began to bark again, with that terrible sharp yowking noise. I gripped the dog and held her. I could feel under her warm rib cage that she was panting as fast as I. My heart was breaking.
“Gaia!” I yelled down the echoing shaft.
And then from the impenetrable darkness a faint whimper answered me.
I WAS STILL debating how to get help when a voice nearby cried my name.
“Aulus! Over here-quickly.”
My new partner might be a spoiled, surly senator’s son, but he knew how to stick with the most urgent job in hand. Alone of the crowd in the atrium he had bothered to follow me. I heard him curse as he crashed towards me through the bushes, snagging his tunic or scratching himself on thorns.
“Gently,” I warned in a low voice, before I turned back and called down, “Gaia! Don’t move. We’re here now.”
Aelianus had reached me. He took in the situation rapidly, pointed downwards with his index finger to ask if that was where the child was, then silently grimaced.
“We need help,” I groaned. “We need Petronius Longus. Only the vigiles are equipped for this. I want you to go and fetch them. I’ll stay with the child and try to keep her calm. Tell Petro the situation.” I was crouched back at the shaft, examining it. “Say this: The well looks deep; the child sounds a long way down; she is alive, but very weak. I reckon she has been down there over two days. Someone will have to go down to her. It looks a pig’s arse.”
“Very difficult?” interpreted Aelianus primly.
“We need ropes primarily, but also any other useful equipment the vigiles can come up with.”
“Lights,” he suggested
“Yes. Above all, we need the stuff fast.”
“Right.” He was moving off.
“Aulus, listen-I want you to go yourself. Don’t be sidetracked at the house.”
“I won’t go that way,” he said. “Leg me up. I’ll shin over this wall. Then I’ll be in the street and straight off.”
“Good thinking. You’re almost at the Fourth Cohort headquarters.” I started giving him directions while we tackled shunting him up and over the tall wall at the end of the property. He was no lightweight. Next time I chose a partner I would go for a thin, half-starved one.
